Editorials
Grab a Drink Because ‘Seven’ Turns 21 Today!
Back in 1992, David Fincher was still reeling from the awful experience he had making his first feature film Alien 3. After production was complete, he swore he would never make another movie. He eventually broke that oath a year and a half later when New Line Cinema sent him Andrew Kevin Walker’s early draft of a script for Seven (sometimes obnoxiously called Se7en). The rest is history.
***SPOILERS for a 21-year-old film below.***
“But Trace, why are you covering Seven, a mystery neo-noir psychological thriller film (according to Wikipedia) on a horror website?”, you ask? That’s because Seven is a horror movie. As our own Jonathan Barkan so eloquently put it last year: “It’s a serial killer that offs people based on the seven deadly sins. It’s gory, it’s horrifying, and it’s got an ending that still haunts people to this day.” Point taken, Barkan.
Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow may be the stars of Seven, but the real star is Fincher’s direction and Darius Khondji’s cinematography. It is only his second film but it feels like it could be his tenth. The film looks so dreary. From the crowded streets of Los Angeles (where the Seven was filmed, though the city in the film remains unnamed). The color palette helps matters, but Fincher’s decision to film Seven as simplistically as possible (COPS was used as inspiration) added to the crudeness of the film.
I won’t delve too much into the “is Seven a horror movie” argument, except to say that Seven is most definitely a horrifying film. Whether that makes it a horror movie is up to the viewer to decide, but I certainly view it as one. Most people cite the sloth sequence as the most disturbing part of the film, but for me it’s always been Leland Orser’s interrogation scene. That is a truly difficult scene to watch, especially when you learn how he murdered that prostitute.
One can’t discuss Seven without mentioning its sucker-punch of an ending. It is a bleakly poetic ending that still gets under people’s skin. Of course, that wasn’t always the ending of the film. It was in Walker’s original draft of the screenplay, but the studio was hesitant to use it, fearing that it would not be well-received by audiences. They made him re-write the ending with a more action-y ending Lucky for us, New Line accidentally sent Fincher the first draft of the screenplay with the head-in-a-box ending, and he fought for it. He even went so far as to make it a condition of him accepting the directing gig.
Even after filming, the studio remained concerned about the end of the film. They were so worried that they even tried to replace Paltrow’s character’s head with that of a dog. Apparently it was just a bit too depressing. Thankfully, Fincher still stuck to his guns and Brad Pitt stood by him until the very end, leading the studio to concede and release the film per Fincher’s and Walker’s vision.
It’s also worth noting that Spacey’s identity as the serial killer John Doe was not revealed to audiences until they saw the film (unless they read certain reviews that revealed this fact). It was a solid bit of marketing that showed the confidence New Line had in the film. Most studios would have put Spacey front and center, especially in a post-The Silence of the Lambs world. You almost wish more studios would show that kind of restraint nowadays.
Seven was released on September 21, 1995 and grossed a mere $13.1 million domestically during its first weekend in theaters. It would spend five weeks at the number one spot at the box office and go on to gross $100.1 million domestically and $227.1 million overseas. This coincidentally made it the seventh highest grossing film of 1995. It was also released to widespread critical acclaim. It currently sits at 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 65 on Metacritic. Richard Francis-Bruce was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Editing in a motion picture, but he lost to Mike Hill and David P. Hanley for Apollo 13. Seven did, however, win Best Picture, Most Desirable Male (Brad Pitt) and Best Villain (Kevin Spacey) at the MTV Movie Awards. So that’s something.
So grab a drink and celebrate the fact that Seven turns 21 today (or lament the fact that people born in 1995 are now turning 21). Either way, drink responsibly and pop Seven in the ol’ Blu-Ray player today. It gets better and better with each subsequent viewing.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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